http://english.aawsat.com/2016/06/article55352829/washington-saving-nuclear-deal-conceals-million-documents-exposing-tehrans-terrorism

*Washington, Saving Nuclear Deal, Conceals over a Million Documents
Exposing Tehran’s Terrorism*

On May 2, 2011, United States forces entered the upper-class mansion in
Abbottabad, Pakistan that was being used as a safe house for Osama Bin
Laden. Having shot and killed the Al-Qaeda leader, they proceeded to
exploit the compound for any materials that might prove to be of
intelligence value. Soldiers retrieved what a senior intelligence official
subsequently described to reporters as a “robust collection of materials”
and, later, “the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials
ever.”

The U.S. Government described the stash as exceeding a million documents,
stored on paper and in 10 hard drives, nearly 100 thumb drives, and data
cards — not to mention a vast cache of printed materials. According to
President Barack Obama’s national security advisor, Thomas Donilon, the
material could fill “a small college library.”

A CIA team was designated to analyze the material, with a priority on
immediately actionable intelligence but the eventual goal of thoroughly
mining the content for as close to a comprehensive understanding of
AL-Qaeda as possible. The Administration also promised to make most of the
materials available to the public as soon as it was operationally safe and
advisable to do so.

Yet more than five years after the confiscation of the documents, none but
a small fraction of the materials have been released to the public. Former
intelligence officers familiar with interagency disputes over the archive
assert, moreover, that the modest amount of declassified material was used
by the Obama Administration to support a political narrative about Al-Qaeda
that is not borne out by the majority of the documents. Among the major
discrepancies: *Significant evidence of cooperation between Al-Qaeda and
the Iranian government.*

For this special investigation, Asharq Alawsat interviewed former
intelligence officers, staff members of the National Security Archive in
Washington, and experts on successive U.S. Governments’ declassification
policies — in addition to scrutinizing more than 250 documents from the
Abbottabad compound. Among the key findings of the investigation:

– *Bin Laden described Iran as “our main artery for funds, personnel, and
communication,” and instructed subordinates to “refrain from attacking Iran
and devote your total resources … to the fight against the crusaders and
the apostates.”*

– There was a clear contrast between public statements by Al-Qaeda
declaring all Shi’ites to be apostates on the one hand, and internal
deliberations by the organization calling for a pragmatic give-and-take
with the Mullahs of Tehran on the other.

– Bin Laden grew agitated as reports of Al-Qaeda-Iran cooperation emerged
in Arabic media, and urged his subordinates to refute them vigorously.

– Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi targeted Shi’ite holy places and civilians in Iraq
against the orders of Bin Laden, sparking a crisis in the Al-Qaeda-Iran
relationship. Iran took aggressive measures against Al-Qaeda, including the
detention of members of Bin Laden’s family, in order to negotiate a
restoration of cooperation from a position of strength.

– Iran used its access to and power over Al-Qaeda as leverage with the
United States during both the Bush and Obama administrations.

– In the lead up to the 2012 Presidential campaign in which President Obama
ran for reelection, the White House selectively released a few Abbottabad
documents to support its claim that Al-Qaeda had been nearly defeated.

– That same year, a specially designated task force of intelligence
analysts from United States Central Command [CENTCOM] organized a visit to
the Abbottobad archives in Virginia, only to have permission to view the
documents revoked by the President’s National Security Council.

– Fifty intelligence analysts from CENTCOM have formally complained that
their work is being altered by their superiors to paint a rosy picture of
the American military campaign against ISIS — sparking a Pentagon
investigation into alleged manipulation of intelligence.

– The alleged suppression of evidence of Al-Qaeda-Iran cooperation
coincides with a brazen Administration campaign to focus the public’s
attention on claims of a Saudi government operational role in the 9-11
tragedy.

– The Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is
demanding the immediate release of all Abbottabad documents. A former
Marine intelligence and Special Operations officer asserts that there is no
operational justification to continue to withhold the vast majority of the
documents.

– Experts on U.S. Government classification policies have dubbed the Obama
White House “the most secretive administration in American presidential
history.”

Chronology of Secrecy

In March 2012, as the one-year anniversary of the Abbottabad raid
approached, President Obama’s reelection campaign was in full swing. The
Administration worked through Washington Post columnist David Ignatius to
delay a handful of excerpts from the archive, which were aptly summed up in
the column’s headline, “Osama Bin Laden: A Lion in Winter.” Ignatius wrote:
“I’ve only seen a small sample of the thousands of items that were carried
away the night of May 2, 2011. But even those few documents shown to me by
a senior Obama administration official give a sense of how … [Al-Qaeda] had
lost its momentum. He added that Bin Laden and his cohorts had been “hunted
so relentlessly by U.S. forces that they had trouble sending the simplest
communications.” The column, and a handful of others based on a similar
provision of information, supported the oft-quoted Administration claim
that Al-Qaeda was “on the run.” Materials provided to Ignatius were among
the fewer than 20 Abbottobad documents that were eventually released to the
public on the first anniversary of the historic raid.

But subsequent reporting by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard magazine
exposed a snafu in the declassification that later took on added
significance. Shortly before the release of the documents, one was withheld
from the public: a document revealing close operational coordination
between Al-Qaeda and senior figures of the Afghan Taleban — not in the
distant past, but up until the final stage of Bin Laden’s life. In addition
to contradicting the portrayal of a “lion in winter,” information about
recent Afghan Taleban plots against American and NATO forces naturally
stood to imperil then-ongoing negotiations between the Obama Administration
and the Taleban. The document was not released — and meanwhile, senior
administration officials including Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and
CIA chief John Brennan told the public that Al-Qaeda’s defeat was imminent.

Meanwhile, intelligence analysts at US Central Command, conducting their
own investigations of Al-Qaeda, were finding that, to the contrary,
Al-Qaeda was alive and well; Bin Laden had been actively involved in its
operations to the last; and the decades-old relationship between Al-Qaeda
leadership figures and Iran had not ceased. Michael Pregent, a former
analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency who focused on Iran in the
course of his service, recalls, “In looking at phone numbers, signals
intelligence intercepts, and other things, we started to see route
facilitation through Iran. There was a letter in the [unclassified] Bin
Laden documents referring to Iran’s crucial role in the organization,
warning Al-Qaeda operatives not to mess with Iran. We were trying to gain
historical knowledge of the organization, to see how it functioned. And we
started seeing stuff nobody was talking about, like Iranian facilitation of
Al-Qaeda travel into Pakistan, for example.” Derek Harvey, another member
of the CENTCOM team, told Asharq Alawsat that at the time, the Bin Laden
documents were languishing: Following several initial weeks in which a
CIA-led interagency intelligence team conducted keyword searches to gain
immediately actionable intelligence, the material was not reviewed further
by anyone for a year if not longer. Maintaining control over the documents,
the CIA refused to allow other agencies to review them.

What follows was a dispute within the U.S. Government over whether the
CENTCOM unit should be permitted to view the Abbottabad material. Senior
CENTCOM officials argued vigorously for the access, and eventually, James
Clapper, CIA director at the time, agreed to relent.

Pregent recalls that his group received permission from the CIA to go to
the National Media Exploitation Center in McClean, Virginia to review the
documents. But shortly before the date of the scheduled visit, Pregent
explained to Asharq Alawsat, it was abruptly cancelled. “From what I was
told, the decision came from the President’s National Security Council. The
team was disbanded weeks later.” Reporting from Stephen Hayes of the Weekly
Standard cites his own intelligence sources as indicating that some
analysts were summoned to Washington and instructed to stop attempting to
analyze the few documents they had.

Nonetheless, public pressure continued to mount for the declassification of
the documents — much of it from Congress, in an effort spearheaded by
California Congressman Denon Nunes, Chairman of the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence. In 2014, a new “Intelligence Authorization Act”
required the Office of the Directorate of National Intelligence to conduct
a review of the documents for release. An interagency task force was
established to review them — under White House auspices.

Two years later, fewer than 250 of the million documents have been
declassified. Following the release of the most recent batch — 113
documents — on March 1, 2016, Congressman Nunes issued the following
statement: “Although it is gratifying to see the new release of bin Laden
documents, the Obama administration still needs to produce many more. The
CIA already should have provided all the bin Laden documents to the House
Intelligence Committee, and the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence should have already completed a classification review of all
the documents to determine which can be publicly released. I look forward
to receiving the remaining documents promptly.”

The DNI’s office states that “All documents whose publication will not hurt
ongoing operations against Al-Qaeda or their affiliates will be released.”

This stated commitment raises questions for Timothy Ward Nichols, a
professor at Duke University focused on counterterrorism and intelligence
policy who previously served in special operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
More than five years after the documents were seized from Abbottabad,
Nichols told Asharq Alawsat, “it is hard to imagine that all but a few of
them have the potential to compromise ongoing operations.

If there were information about locations or planned activities and the
idea would be to get that into the intelligence system and take action,
target people, interdict — we’re a number of years into it, and if that
action hasn’t happened already, it probably isn’t going to happen. Though
some information might be worth holding onto, I doubt that the vast
majority of the material has continuing intelligence value.”

Questions about the concealment of the Abbottobad archives are being raised
in the context of broader accusations against the Obama Administration of
manipulation of intelligence analysis.

Late last year, more than 50 intelligence analysts from the U.S. military’s
Central Command issued a series of complaints alleging that their reporting
and analysis of ISIS al Qaeda’s activities in Syria were being
significantly altered by their superiors, in order to paint a rosier
picture of the American military campaign against ISIS. The complaints
caused the Pentagon’s inspector general to launch an investigation into
alleged manipulation of intelligence. The formally lodged complaints
described the censorious atmosphere surrounding intelligence analysts’ work
as “Stalinist.” Then, in a further dramatic development last month, it
emerged that two senior intelligence analysts at CENTCOM had been forced
out of their jobs due to the skeptical assessments which they had presented
to their superiors.

Asked to appraise the allegations against the upper echelons of CENTCOM,
Nichols noted his longstanding knowledge of one of the main complainants,
senior intelligence officer Gregg Hooker. “Gregg, whom I’ve known for 20
years, is probably the best US analyst on Iraq that there is. And when he’s
concerned that the analytical intelligence that he submits is being fiddled
with to make it look better than it is, I side with Gregg.”

Commenting on the politicization of intelligence, Nichols suggested that
the problem seems to lie largely with the National Security Council: “When
intelligence enters the NSC, I think that’s where a lot of the
politicization happens, and it’s doing a disservice to President Obama. He
put his people into place, and they are telling him what he wants to hear.”
But Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who served as director of the Defense
Intelligence Agency before retiring in 2014, assigns the blame to a higher
level of government: He told the Fox News Channel that “The focus of this
investigation ought to start at the top … Where intelligence starts and
stops is at the White House. The president sets the priorities and he’s the
number one customer.”

Even based on the limited Abbottabad material that has been declassified
thus far, the contours of a complex yet enduring relationship between
Al-Qaeda and Iran are discernable.

Iran is “Our Main Artery for Funds, Personnel, and Communications”

References to the role of Iran in Al-Qaeda activities come across on a more
casual operational level in correspondence between Bin Laden and his
subordinates in the field. For example, in an April 2011 report sent to Bin
Laden from an operative elsewhere in Pakistan, there are references to
colleagues who have established themselves in Iran: “Brother ((Abu al‐Samah))
al‐Masri left and now he is in Iran. It seems that he resumed media
activities and communications under the title “Jama’at al‐Jihad” as you can
see in an attached file. Also, brother ((‘Abdallah Rajab)) al‐Libi left and
he is in Iran too.” A letter by Bin Laden dated August 27, 2010, there is
reference to “brothers coming from Iran,” as well as a discussion of other
“brothers to go to Iran for safekeeping.”
In a different undated letter, there is a reference to Yemeni Al-Qaeda
operatives who were arrested in Pakistan en route to Iran. That is, it
appears that Iran was their destination, not merely a transit point.

In an undated letter regarding “external operations,” an operative reports
to Bin Laden that he has been considering opening an office in Iran: “If we
would like to implement what we have discussed above, first thing we have
to face is establishing a complete organization, which we cannot to because
the lack of finance and required cadres, and I think our job is executive
work which has to belong to us. That is why we have thought to open an
office for ourselves in Iran, to receive whoever comes to join us or
someone traveling.” The operative goes on to raise concerns that the cost
of doing so are prohibitive at the present time.

Perhaps one of the most telling documents is a letter from Bin Laden, dated
October 18, 2007, in which he conveys disapproval to one of his followers —
likely in Iraq — who has adopted hostile rhetoric toward Iran. “You did not
consult with us on that serious issue that affects the general welfare of
all of us. We expected you would consult with us for these important
matters, for as you are aware, Iran is our main artery for funds,
personnel, and communication, as well as the matter of hostages.” He
subsequently states, “There is no need to fight with Iran, unless you are
forced to … My advice is to refrain from attacking them and devote your
total resources to … the fight against the crusaders and the apostates.
This is also my opinion about the other fronts such as Lebanon and the
like.”

Bin Laden’s advice famously went unheeded by Abu Mus’ab Al-Zarqawi, the
leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq during the early years of the US-led occupation
of the country following the ouster of Saddam Hussein. As has been widely
reported, Zarqawi’s decision to target Shi’ite holy places and Shi’ite
civilians was taken unilaterally, against the advice of Osama Bin Laden.
When the bloody incidents caused a rift in relations between Al-Qaeda and
Iran, however, an Iranian intermediary met with a senior Qaeda operative to
attempt to resolve their differences and resume cooperation. This effort is
described in an undated letter, apparently reform Iraq, in which an
Al-Qaeda operative reports on a discussion with an Iranian intermediary:
“The Iranians are very interested in working with someone from the chief’s
[Bin Laden’s] side … they believe the brothers there, specifically
“al-Azraq” [a reference to Zarqawi] and his group, have a hand in the
attack on the Shi’a holy sites. Therefore, they want to meet with a
delegate from the chief’s side to discuss this matter openly; there is also
the potential for cooperation. … the Iranians have a desire to provide
support and assistance … The Iranians would also like to receive at least a
letter signed by the chief, assuring them that the Shi’a holy sites will
not be targeted by the brothers. Furthermore, the holy sites should not be
included as targets to attack. The letter should also say that what had
happened was a result of planning over there, and the chief and his
associates are not pleased and had not agreed to targeting those sites.”

Ideological justification for Al-Qaeda cooperation with Iran

Other available Abbottabad documents offer a glimpse into the ideological
worldview adopted by Bin Laden which appears to justify cooperation with
Shi’ite Iran — even by a Sunni jihadist takfiri movement which regards
Shi’ism as being tantamount to polytheism. Bin Laden is seen asserting in
various ways that the broader interest of confronting the United States
makes it prudent to set aside such differences and cooperate with Iran — as
long as Iran is similarly committed to defeating the United States.

According to one undated memorandum by Bin Laden, “The interest at this
stage remains with not having the mujahidin enter into a military war with
Iran, which would disrupt the singular effort aimed at the chief of
unbelief, America. I believe that we, by the grace of God the Sublime, are
in the time period of finishing off America. But as you know, the major
nations are not brought down in a night, and being preoccupied with a
grueling enemy and giving it a chance to catch its breath, and entering
into a long-term war with another enemy, is contrary to wisdom.”

Another example of the public case for cooperation with Iran against a
mutual enemy is in an undated “letter to the Muslim Brothers in Iraq and
the Islamic nation.” Bin Laden writes, “The Iraqi who performs Jihad
against the American infidels or ‘Allawi’s apostate government, is our
brother and friend, even if he is Iranian, Kurdish or Turkmen. And the
Iraqi who is a part of this apostate government, and fights the Mujahidin
who are resisting the occupation, is an apostate and infidel, even if he is
an Arab.”

In 2011, as the ouster of Tunisian president Zine al-Abedin bin Ali seemed
to herald a wave of revolutions in the Arab world, Bin Laden appeared keen
to place his imprint on the seismic development, and perhaps guide the
revolutionaries through his writings and advice. In seeking an analogy with
which to proffer his advice, more than once in his writings Bin Laden
refers approvingly to the Iranian revolution against the Shah. For example,
in his “letter to the Islamic nation at large” written after the revolution
in Tunisia, Bin Laden hails the “Iranian revolution’s successful overthrow
of the Shah.” In another letter to “my Islamic Ummah,” apparently also in
the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution, Bin Laden again sites the Iranian
revolution as a kind of exemplar, in making his case that all remnants of
the incumbent regime need to be flushed clean: “The Iranian revolution’s
leaders insisted on freeing the country of the regime completely. Even
after they expelled the Shah, leaving matters to the Shahbur, where the
people were calling for the return of the Shah, they did not stop the
revolution. When this continued, despite shedding the regime of their blood
supply, [they were insistent] on removing the entire regime.”

Sensitivities over a public association with Iran

Indications of Al-Qaeda accommodationism with Iran did not go unnoticed in
the broader Arab world. In some of the correspondence, Al-Qaeda leaders
manifest an awareness of the perception in some Arab countries that
Al-Qaeda has established a partnership with Iran. Al-Qaeda’s leadership
seem to understand that this perception is problematic and needs to be
counteracted in some way. In a letter dated December 17, 2007, Bin Laden
provides media and public communications advice to Abu-‘Abdallah al-Haj
‘Uthman. He states that whereas some denunciations of Al-Qaeda by Arab
governments should simply be ignored, Arabic media reports of an
Iran-Al-Qaeda connection are “hurtful” to the organization, and should be
publicly refuted.

It seems meanwhile that some of Bin Laden’s followers, steeped as they are
in Takfiri-style hostility toward Shi’ites, want to be assured that the
leader of the organization is not “soft” on the Shi’ite sect. In an undated
letter to Bin Laden, an Al-Qaeda operative queries him about his puzzling
reluctance to criticize the Islamic Republic: “I will leave other issues
for upcoming communications, such as your silence regarding the Iranian
strategy in the region, and the nature of the relationship to it,
especially after the repeated calls to Muslims by Dr. Ayman to support
Hezbollah, knowing that Hezbollah is a part of the Iranian rejectionist
agenda.”

Thus a bifurcation emerges — between, on the one hand, pragmatic
deliberations in private about the Tehran regime’s value as an asset to
Al-Qaeda and, on the other hand, hostile statements for public consumption
about Al-Qaeda’s rejection of the Shi’ite sect. For example, in a letter
dated March 1, 2004 [9-1-1425 Hijri] and attributed to Sulayman Bin Nasir
al-‘Ulwan, Shi’ism is declared to be tantamount to polytheism.

And yet even in the public discussion, and within the most virulent
anti-Shi’ite writings Al-Qaeda produced, the organization took pains to
temper the rhetoric, apparently in deference to the interplay between the
organization and the Iranian leadership. In one draft of a speech about
Shi’ites, despite virulent denunciations of the sect, the author
nonetheless asserts that “I am not biased to people over other people for
ethnicity, blood, or nationality, and I thank God for the blessing of
faith, as Salman the Persian and Bilal the Ethiopian are our masters and
dignitaries, God be pleased with them, even if they are non-Arabs, and Ibn
Salul al-Khazraji and Abu Lahab al-Hashimi are our enemies, even if they
are Arabs and closer to us in blood. What counts is Islam and faith, and
not country and relationship.” The draft proceeds to suggest that Sunnis
and Shi’ites alike are both capable of being led astray: “Here I direct one
bit of advice to the Sunnis and another to the Shi’a, which is that God
knows I try to deliver the truth to all the people so that they know it and
hold on to it, so that we all enter paradise, God willing, and with His
grace and mercy.” But a comment to the draft document is added by a
critical reader, suggesting that a line of condemnation be included, “like
saying that the Shi’ites are in a wrong religion, based on deifying their
imams to the extent of worshiping them.” At the same time, he cautions that
while Shi’ites should be “denounced,” they should not be declared “enemies”
— because, in the commentator’s words, “We may make the political
leadership of Iran think we are declaring war against them.”

Mutual Distrust and the Fog of War

The many references to cooperation between Al-Qaeda and Iran in various
forms do not mean that the two entities’ respective leaderships regarded
each other with trust — and to the contrary, more than once in the
Abbottabad documents Bin Laden states that the Iranians should not be
trusted. Of the modest number of documents that were declassified by the
U.S. Government, a large proportion of them are focused on Al-Qaeda’s
struggle to deal with the detention of some of its members — including a
wife, children, and grandchildren of Bin Laden himself — by the Iranian
government. From a political standpoint, the materials superficially appear
to negate the evidence of Al-Qaeda-Iran collaboration. But below the
surface emerges a more complex picture.

In some of the correspondence, the writers of letters to and from
Abbottabad convey shock when the Iranian government has detained an
Al-Qaeda operative. In a letter dated 27-12-1431 H, the author — apparently
Bin Laden — asks “the brother Sheikh Mahmud” to ascertain the reasons why
certain Al-Qaeda members in Iran have been detained. He conveys the
opinion, based on input from another member of the organization with
apparent knowledge of Iranian strategic thinking, that “the Iranians were
concerned about pressure.” Bin Laden urges his interlocutors in Iran to
approach the matter delicately — applying their own pressure for the
operatives’ release, but only “gradually.” In the same letter, moreover, he
references other Al-Qaeda operatives in Iran who are plainly moving about
the country freely — to the point that they enter into a discussion of
logistics for the relaying of messages between the Abbottabad compound and
the interior of the “Islamic Republic”: “We will tell the intermediary on
our end to contact you at the start of each solar month – like this time
right now – so you can send us a message if there is anything important
that cannot wait. Since someone from my family in Iran will probably be
coming, please arrange it so that when our friend contacts your friend,
when they are at your place, they should come with him right away.”

A different letter provides further insight as to the nature of “pressure”
Iranians may have faced to place some Al-Qaeda operatives under house
arrest: “They were forced to this under the unjust campaign on Afghanistan
by the United States, as America was targeting the families of the Arab
mujahidin, women and children, blatantly, over and over. So some of those
who
survived it went to Iran without coordination, and they were arrested …”
The author of the letter appears to believe that Bin Laden has sufficient
influence in Iran to negotiate their release: “We asked several times that
they be let go so that they could go to Pakistan. Tehran did not respond to
that, so maybe you could attempt to work on releasing them …”

Other documents appear to suggest a relationship between the detention of
Al-Qaeda operatives in Iran and the Tehran government’s displeasure with
anti-Shi’ite violence in Iraq as spearheaded by Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi. But
perhaps the most poignant of the “arrest” documents — those concerning the
incarceration of Bin Laden’s relatives in Iran during the later years of
his life — are also the ones that coincide with the period of thinly veiled
rapprochement between the Obama Administration and the Tehran regime. It
would not have been difficult for Bin Laden over the last three years of
his life to notice the olive branch Obama held out to the Mullah’s in his
first “Nowruz message” — or the fact that Obama did not voice support for
the “Green Movement” in Iran in 2009.

Thus creeping into Bin Laden’s correspondence about the detention of his
family in Iran over the same period is a heightened paranoia about the
regime’s intensions toward his loved ones. In a letter from February 2011,
titled, “Letter to my caring family,” Bin Laden responds to a letter from
relatives who have been released from detention in Iran and arrived in
nearby Waziristan. It emerges from the correspondence that his wife had
been treated for dizziness by an Iranian doctor. Bin Laden asks her to go
to a female doctor in Waziristan in order to determine “whether or not the
treatment prescribed by the Iranian doctor was necessary.” He is also
concerned about the tooth filling which she was given by an Iranian dentist
— apparently wondering whether there may be a bug or tracking device hidden
in the filling. (In a separate letter, he conveys concern about a “chip
implant.”) A letter a few months prior to the one above, dated September
26, 2010, speaks further to the distrust of the Iranians and the issue of a
chip implant: “ Before Um Hamzah arrives here, it is necessary for her to
leave everything behind, including clothes, books, everything that she had
in Iran… Everything that a needle might possibly penetrate. Some chips have
been lately developed for eavesdropping, so small they could easily be
hidden inside a syringe. Since the Iranians are not to be trusted, it is
possible to implant a chip in some of the belongings that you might have
brought along with you … “

And indeed, in some of the correspondence Bin Laden appears to betray a
sense of foreboding that the Iranian government will, in the fullness of
time, use its access to and power over his organization as leverage in some
sort of negotiations with the United States. In a letter from August 2009,
Bin Laden writes a lengthy letter to the Egyptian jihadist ideologue and
writer Mustafa Hamid, aka Abu Walid al-Masri, in which he refutes some of
Hamid’s writings about the nature of the Iranian regime. Bin Laden appears
concerned to cite instances of Iranian betrayal of various Sunni jihadist
allies — notably the Taleban — in exchange for advantages from the United
States. He writes the following, for example, about the bombardment of
Taleban strongholds in Afghanistan during the post-9/11 US invasion of that
country:“A month after the continuous bombing of the Taliban strongholds to
no avail, the Iranian government presented to the Americans a military map
of the positions that they should focus on to break the line. In fact, when
the Americans took the Iranian advice, the line was broken, as a
representative of the United States stated in the joint committee.“

*Joseph Braude <http://english.aawsat.com/author/j-braude>*

Joseph Braude is the host of “Risalat New York” on MED Radio in Morocco,
and author, most recently, of *The Honored Dead*. He is also a fellow at
the Al-Mesbar Center for Research and Studies in Dubai.

More Posts <http://english.aawsat.com/author/j-braude>

*Related*

[image: Description: Bin Laden remained active in targeting U.S.: official]
<http://english.aawsat.com/2011/05/article55246585/bin-laden-remained-active-in-targeting-u-s-official>

*Bin Laden remained active in targeting U.S.: official
<http://english.aawsat.com/2011/05/article55246585/bin-laden-remained-active-in-targeting-u-s-official>*

In "Middle East"

*New Generation of Al-Qaeda Leaders Emerges in Pakistan: Report
<http://english.aawsat.com/2007/04/article55263168/new-generation-of-al-qaeda-leaders-emerges-in-pakistan-report>*

WASHINGTON (AFP) -Following the death or capture of many top Al-Qaeda
operatives in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, a new generation
of the group's leaders has emerged in Pakistan's tribal areas, The New York
Times reported on its website. Citing unnamed US intelligence and
counterterrorism officials, the…

In "Middle East"



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